Day 21 – Chapter 12 – Marin – 06

Short update today, mostly due to the fact that it was my birthday weekend. Sorry, guys! Turning the big 2-9 was a little more important than…well…stuff. I’ll make it up to you, I promise!

I stared at Rory as if he’d grown a second head, and to be honest, I’m not sure I could have looked at him more strangely if he had. “What?”
Rory grimaced and shook his head. “One of ours belongs to him, but he didn’t say who. He just told me that I’d regret saying no, and that I should join while I could. With the one who was already his.” He exhaled, lacing his fingers through his hair and giving it a slight tug, as if that helped relieve some of his tension. “I couldn’t tell anyone until you woke up. I wasn’t sure who was going to listen and who wouldn’t jump down my throat, you know?”
I blinked at him for a few more seconds before I found my voice. “Who do you think it is?”
“I don’t know,” he said, gaze flicking between Carolyn and I. “I really don’t know. At first I thought maybe it could be Thom and then I remembered that he doesn’t believe in this shit, so it couldn’t be him.”He believes. He just doesn’t want to. I swallowed my words and waited.
“I just don’t know, Mar. I don’t know who it could have been.”
“Would we even know if it was us?” Carolyn’s voice was very small. “I mean, those things…I don’t know what to make of those things. Would we even know if it was one of us? Maybe it’s Paul and he doesn’t know it, or Thom or Matt or Jacqueline or something.”
I stared at her in horror, dread starting to unfurl at the very pit of my stomach.
“Guys?”
I whipped around toward the sound of J.T.’s voice. He took a startled step back when he saw the stricken look on my face.
“…this is a bad time, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” Rory and Carolyn said in unison. I glared at them. J.T. just stood there, blinking.
Finally, he sighed. “We need to powwow, Mar. We’ve got problems.”Great, more of those. “Can’t they wait until Kellin’s awake, too?”
“No,” J.T. said firmly, shaking his head and joining us as we clustered around the next ward. “We need to talk about this now. After you went down, that shadow-thing that attacked you and Thom and all the rest of us talked to me.”Shit. It’s worse than I thought. I pressed my thumbs against my eyes and tried not to groan.
“Is there anyone else that’s going to join this party before I tell you to spill, Jay?” I asked.
“Thom, maybe, but I told him to stay put.”
I grunted. “Right. Okay. Spill.”God, I hope we’re not completely screwed. Am I the only one it didn’t talk to directly?
I supposed that I was about to find out.

Honestly, I’m not that concerned with the whole getting older thing–not like my grandmother is (which is to say she’s concerned with me getting older because I’m her oldest grandchild. The poor thing–the youngest is in kindergarten or first grade right now, I think). I’ve accomplished quite a bit, I like to think, that was on my “Before Age 30” list already!